Minimum Wage

Well not quite gravity, but close enough for post-modernist work. You know how liberals like to attach taxes on cigarettes so we’ll buy fewer of them, and on alcohol so we’ll drink less, etc? Funny, though, how the basic lesson of supply and demand and price sensitivity falls by the wayside when it comes to the minimum wage. We’ve commented on this invincible ignorance repeatedly (such as here, here, here, »

A number of cities across the country have enacted dramatic increases in the minimum wage. This has caused a great deal of harm, but on the plus side, it has enabled research on the economic consequences of mandating wages at higher than market rates. This study was carried out under the auspices of the Harvard Business School by Dara Lee Luca and Michael Luca: We study the impact of the »

Demonstrators protesting the nomination of Andy Puzder to be Secretary of Labor apparently didn’t know who Puzder is. So reports Jason Howerton of Independent Journal Review. In a YouTube video posted by American Rising Squared, an interviewer asks three people who appear to be protesting Puzder’s nomination at a rally in Boston: “Do you guys know who Andy Puzder is?” One of the respondents shook her head “no.” Another responded, »

Michael Ramirez isn’t just the best conservative editorial cartoonist in the world, he is the best cartoonist in the world, period. Formerly with the Los Angeles Times, Michael has been drawing for Investor’s Business Daily. But with IBD going to a weekly format, Michael has moved to the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal. It’s a coup for Heritage, and should be a great home for Ramirez. If you haven’t already bookmarked »

Regarding my item last Friday about the “expected” poor results from the higher minimum wage in Seattle, a perceptive reader offers the observation that the minimum wage should be better understood as a government ban on low-paying jobs: The term “minimum wage” does not serve us well. Only an employer can decide on a true ”minimum wage,” in the sense of a determination to pay no less than some level. »

William F. Buckley Jr. used to speak of the “invincible ignorance” of liberalism, and there’s hardly a better example than the minimum wage. Generally the first thing you learn on the first day of Econ 101 is that if you raise the price of something, you’ll reduce the demand for that something. Including labor. So it’s fun to notice this morning that the city of Seattle, which threw out both »

Gee, who could have seen this coming? From the Los Angeles Times yesterday: California Minimum Wage Hike Hits L.A. Apparel Industry: “The Exodus Has Begun” Los Angeles was once the epicenter of apparel manufacturing, attracting buyers from across the world to its clothing factories, sample rooms and design studios. But over the years, cheap overseas labor lured many apparel makers to outsource to foreign competitors in far-flung places such as »

As we and others have endlessly reminded, if liberals didn’t have double standards they wouldn’t have any standards at all. Witness Hillary’s prostration on Tuesday (“Equal Pay Day“) about how since rent, groceries, etc., all cost the same for men and women, women should be paid as much as men. Hey Hillary—how about starting at home, with the pay gap for executives at the Clinton Foundation: Pay Gap Alert: Clinton »

Empirical research continues to show that the minimum wage, when it is set above the prevailing wages actually paid to entry level workers in a particular locale, throws many of the most vulnerable out of work. The latest, from Jeffrey Clemens of the University of California, San Diego, is titled “The Minimum Wage and the Great Recession: Evidence from the Current Population Survey.” It is a working paper of the »

An astute reader points out this piece by the ever-clueless Bob Reich in the Huffington Post. Reich, defending a $15 minimum wage, concedes that imposing such a minimum would cause jobs to be lost, but argues that “such jobs [i.e., jobs that can’t command $15] aren’t worth keeping.” Tell that, I guess, to the guy who was all set to go to work for $12 an hour until you made »